Franklin’s Four Rules for Living

1. It is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, until I have paid what I owe.
2. To endeavor to speak truth in every instance; to give nobody expectations that are not likely to be answered, but aim at sincerity in every word and action – the most amiable excellence in a rational being.

If you ride a horse sit close and tight, If you ride a man, sit easy and light.

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.

Faith is the worst curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought. To rest one's case on faith means to concede that reason is on the side of one's enemies - that one has no rational arguments to offer.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede

“We are not planning to attack other countries,” he told a Turkish reporter. “We didn’t attack Ukraine, either.”